Locating and navigating to electronic content can be problematic, particularly when there is an abundance of available content. Navigation of Web-based content, such as that delivered or accessed through webpages, may be eased with the use of a search engine. The search engine may perform a keyword search of available webpages to identify those having content related to a search term. The search engine may return the corresponding search results within a webpage having a plurality of links to the related content. The links may be arranged in an order of relevance such that a link deemed to be the most relevant by the search engine is provided at a top of the webpage and additional links are thereafter listed according to their individual relevance. Typically, a user may select a link from this first set of search results to view a first piece of content. From the first piece of content, the user may then formulate subsequent search terms based on the first piece of content, that reveal subsequent search results, with links to subsequent pieces of content. Thus, in a top-down step-wise, or linear fashion the user may explore the contents of the Internet in general, or various sub-spaces thereof. This navigation is typical for search engines for search of webpages on the Internet in general, as well as defined sub-spaces of the Internet, e.g., Wikipedia, USPTO. For example, a typical user of Wikipedia may search on a first term, then subsequently link to highlighted words within the Wikipedia page that leads to other Wikipedia pages in a sequential manner.
This top-down, sequential arrangement of the search results according to search-term or keyword relevance may fail to adequately identify a resource or piece of content associated with an initial search of webpages. While a user may quickly identify an initial webpage, or list of content items, deemed to be the most relevant, the user may be less likely to quickly ascertain whether the corresponding webpages are associated with desirable resources, and their overall relationship to one another. In particular, the user may prefer navigating search results in a more holistic or relational manner based in part on content that may be remote in relation to an initial term. In addition, such search results of available content may be based on results from a plurality of resources. Accordingly, one non-limiting aspect of the present invention contemplates a need to allow a user to quickly and simultaneously view content from a search, including remote content and content from different resources, based off of an initial search term, rather than a long sequential series of searches.